[Roxburghe Collection, II. 332.] The Maiden's Counsellor;

Dr,

A fair Warning before Marriage.
You Damosels fair, take special care,
And not too hasty be,

A Marriage Life brings Care and Strife,
When single Maids live free.

TUNE OF, The Spinning-Wheel.

This may be Printed, R[ichard] P[ocock].

Yo

Oung Damosels all, both far and near,
Observe the Counsel which I give;
And then I'm sure you need not fear,
But that you all may happy live:
Let not young Men your hearts insnare,
A Single Life is free from Care.

Full one and twenty years and more,
I am of Age, full well 'tis known,
And tho' I have got sweet-Hearts store,
Yet I delight to lye alone;
Resolv'd I am to shun the snare :

A Single Life is free from Care.

12

We continue the group of Counsellors by advancing another ballad from its position. The only copy of it known. Its tune, "The Spinning Wheel," has been described in Bagford Ballads, p. 19; where is given "The Bonny Scot; or, The Yielding Lass." The burden is, "But still I turn'd my Spinning Wheel."

[In Black-letter; with these four woodcuts. No printer's name. Date, 1685-88.]

We come to two other ballads which give advice in the choice of a partner for life, on pp. 488 and 493; but both of them are addressed to young men. They are "The English Fortune-Teller," and "A Reprobation against the Wise Fortune-Teller." We are glad to have them follow in the same volume with the present Group of Counsellors.

GROUP ON THE EARL OF DANBY.

The Disloyal Favourite.

"The Sages, of old, in Prophecy told
The cause of a Nation's undoing:

But our new English breed no Prophets do need,
For each one here seeks his own ruin.

"With grumbling and jarrs, we promote Civil Wars,
And preach up false Tenets too many;

We snarl and we bite, we rail and we fight,
For Religion, but no man has any."

-Tom D'Urfey's Loyal Statesman, 1714.

Of the following song one other copy belongs to Mr. Huth

(Folio Coll., I. 74); in his catalogue it is mistakenly applied to Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. But the person denounced is Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby. Probably issued (in 1679) between 1678, the date of Oates's pretended Popish-Plots, and the death of Charles II., in February, 168, it came as an outburst of the Shaftesbury and Russell faction.

We have so recently written our deliberate opinion of the intrigues and falsehoods employed by the disaffected gang, who used the Duke of Monmouth as their puppet, and Protestant Cause as their rallying cry, that little more is needed in this place than a reference to the notes of Bagford Ballads devoted to Danby (pp. 660, 696, 754 and 755). We bring hither another unique broadside, assailing him, from its later place in Roxb. Coll., III. 827, “A Dialogue between Lauderdale and Danby." It is better to have these two here conjoined, preceding the Group of Anti-Papal Ballads. Malicious cleverness was shown in the selection of 66 Sawney shall ne'er be my love again," as the tune for this ballad. It glanced at the former hopes, it denounced the assumed treachery and irretrievable downfall of "Tommy," by the popular example of "Sawney." Tom D'Urfey wrote the original song, printed in 1680, for his "Virtuous Wife," acted in 1679: beginning:

I put them on with mine awn hand,

I gave him house, I gave him land.

Yet Sawney 'Il ne er be my Love agen. (Two more verses.)

How Two can play the same Tune, and Game. 81

We need give no more, at present, for we shall soon reach the sequel to this song (in Roxb. Coll., II. 223), where will be a more fitting place to attend to it and the tune; music of which (probably by Thomas Farmer) is given in Playford's Choice Ayres, iii. 9, 1681; Pills, i. 317; and Chappell's Popular Music, p. 620. Another ballad, to the same tune, is "The Poet's Dream" (Roxb. Coll., II. 254).

The Court-party was not likely to be daunted by such a squib as "The Disloyal Favourite." On their side were generally ranged several clever lampooners, song-writers, and political stone-slingers; quite a match in readiness of wit, to say the least, for the "ten thousand brisk boys of Wapping," who were ostentatiously pitted against them. Therefore the loyal Cavaliers soon took the same tune, and fitted to it their "Answer," which was intended to be sung at a Loyal Feast in Haberdashers' Hall, on 21st April, 1682. Printed first by Allan Banks, 1682, as a broadside, it was reprinted afterwards among the "180 Loyal Songs," 1685, p. 195. It refers to the projected Whig Feast, which had been prohibited, as being likely to lead to disturbances. Of course, the attack is against Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, who had laboured to secure Danby's ruin :

So the engineer Machiavel was "hoist with his own petard." The burden continues invariably: "And Tony will never be himself again. Following it, among the Loyal Songs, is another ballad to the same tune, beginning, "Listen, if you please, a while." It is directed against the infamous Titus Oates, the perjurer. By its coarseness it suggests to memory the sensible warning of Dogberry: "For such kind of men, the lesse you meddle or make with them, why the more is for your honesty. I think they that touch pitch will be defiled." Libellers and lampooners might learn a useful lesson from the Constable, who was "not written down" that which he was irreverently called. England would have been happier in those Stuart days, if there had been no worse men than Dogberry.

VOL. IV.

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